Biteback, Nov 14

Will a new documentary on English National Ballet do them any favours? Here's hoping they learn the lessons from BBC2's The House

Was the new Venice exhibition at the National Gallery well curated? (National Gallery)
Is English National Ballet mad? It is letting in the cameras for a
fly-on-the-wall television series.

You might have thought the lesson had been learnt from Covent Garden, whose
staff were made to look like a bunch of self-important bunglers a decade or
so ago when it invited in BBC2 to make the documentary series The House. It
took the opera and ballet companies two or three years to recover. English
Heritage, too, got egg on its face last year when it was followed by the
cameras in a four-parter, also for the BBC. I suspect EH’s chief executive,
Simon Thurley, reckoned his organisation would come up smelling of roses.
Instead, it ponged like manure.

Anyway, ENB has taken the plunge, ostensibly to coincide with its 60th
anniversary, for a three-parter to go out some time next year. Provisionally
called A Year at English National Ballet (come on, let’s get